Conversation Piece, November 26, 2017

A weekly series.

Novel nostalgia. Many of us can remember getting lost in the worlds of Narnia, Middle Earth, or Hogwarts. And yet, as adults, we have learned to sequester children’s books to the sidelines, opting instead for a more sophisticated and refined reading list of New York Times best-sellers and Nobel Prize-winners. For Lit Hub, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold explores the reasons why we abandon our childhood fictional friends and why revisiting them can be so bittersweet. Read more, here.

Sustainable spit takes. We covet coffee beans that have passed through the Indonesian civet cat, so why not the aftermath of human wine tasting? In a sustainability effort, Tasmania-based distiller Peter Bignell is reusing spittoon contents (much of which comes from overgenerous pours) from Sydney’s Rootstock wine festival to make an 80-proof clear spirit. Reduce, reuse, re-sip, The Guardian reports, here

Marry up. Once upon a time, a woman would wed a man of higher education and professional status, thus stepping up a class—the end. Turn the page to today: studies show that the number of highly educated women now in fact exceeds that of men, meaning it’s men’s turn to marry up. Read more, here.

Bot or not. Computers are not only becoming smarter—they’re becoming more creative. So creative, in fact, that they are able to craft their own poems. In 2013, an Australian grad student created a website that asks you to identify whether a poem was written by a computer or a human, and it’s surprisingly difficult. However, the point is not to test one’s bot-sniffing skills, but rather to look at the larger question of what it truly means to be human. Try it for yourself, here.